Another chance to bash dad

Several years ago, CBS acknowledged Father's Day, as usual, on its folksy Sunday Morning show. Television critic John Leonard, who is anything but folksy, interviewed two young men about their deceased father.

Far from honouring the latter, though, the sons condemned him as a bad father. Maybe Mr. Leonard was exploiting an opportunity to make men think about what a good father might be. Or maybe he was doing so to make men feel ashamed of themselves.

No one can get into anyone else's mind, but anyone can draw conclusions from what people say or do. As an outspoken feminist, Mr. Leonard has focused for years primarily on women -- more specifically, on the ways in which men (including but not restricted to those who produce television shows and commercials) harm women.

Given the symbolic link between women and children, it should have surprised no one that Mr. Leonard would expand his focus on Father's Day to include the ways in which men harm children.

Consider the historical context of that episode. After two or three decades, popular culture had transformed public perceptions of fatherhood. The lineage of endearing-but-bumbling (or worse) fathers from Ozzie and Harriet to All in the Family, Home Improvement and The Simpsons had all but replaced the wise-father lineage from Father Knows Best to The Waltons and 7th Heaven.

During the 1980s (and continuing well into the 1990s), society went through a kind of convulsion, or mass hysteria, over what journalists and clinicians dubbed "recovered memory syndrome." Incest and other forms of molestation, according to not only widespread public opinion but also expert opinion, were rampant at every level of society. The hysteria died down after a while, partly because very few cases produced convincing evidence and partly because psychiatrists eventually challenged the whole notion of "repressed memories." But families had been destroyed and laws had been changed to facilitate convictions against accused fathers and the bureaucratic removal of children from their homes.

Another phenomenon has contributed to the decline of fatherhood: the increasing number of single mothers.

Some began to justify their situation or choice by saying that fathers were assistant mothers at best, burdens to women in any case, and potential molesters at worst. With the development of single motherhood by choice, supported by sperm banks, women could now do it all for themselves.

The new gynocentrism was quickly reflected in massively popular shows such as Golden Girls, Designing Women and Murphy Brown. It was reflected also, not surprisingly, in commercials such as the ones for Robitussin cough medicine ("Dr. Mom"), Kix cereal ("Kid tested, mother approved"), and Jif peanut butter ("Moms like you choose Jif").

The decline of fatherhood in popular culture, despite Father's Day, presents a major problem for those of us who are convinced by scholarly evidence that fathers do indeed have a distinctive and necessary role to play in family life (though not necessarily one that confers immediate emotional gratification). Both historically and cross-culturally, men have made three primary contributions to society: as protectors, providers, and progenitors.

Now that women are making the first two as effectively as men, which is a good thing, that leaves only fatherhood as the possible source for a healthy identity specifically as men.

How can we stop this decline? We could begin by admitting the need to do so, not only taking seriously the studies on differences between motherhood and fatherhood and on what happens to children (especially but not only boys) who lack fathers but also thinking of ways to place these differences in the context of legal equality.

Whatever its commercial or sentimental implications, Father's Day is an opportunity to reverse the pop-cultural trend that trivializes or ridicules fathers and the legal trend that reduces them to walking wallets for child support at best and likely criminals at worst.

Katherine Young (a professor at McGill University) and Paul Nathanson (a senior researcher there) are the authors of Spreading Misandry: the Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture.

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